Earwitness

Not sure how many “10-Best of 2018” lists we’ll be reading in the days ahead. Those convenient ways of jamming 365 days into a tiny capsule: Best Songs/Best Movies/Best TV Shows… and like a kid with bag of popcorn, I always eat ‘em all up. This time around I decided to summarize the year in pop...

In last month’s column (click here ) we began a conversation about a “great marketing challenge of this moment: assigning a sound to a brand.” The reason it’s such a challenge, I suggested, is that an extremely high percentage of the population in most important demographic groups is now listening...

I recently attended a New York Rangers game at Madison Square Garden (my wife and her siblings, raised in Upstate NY near the Canadian border, are all hockey fanatics—I just follow the puck). Before start time, the photo of a new team member, Brett Howden, appeared on the jumbotron, and with it,...

Okay, it’s that time. Hear the waves crashing? Let’s all gather ‘round the fire—I’ve got plenty of dry wood, there’s wine and beer in the cooler. Moon is almost full, that silver light shimmering off the ocean— awesome. Puts me in the mood for some summer music, how about you guys? Thought so!...

As the world learned a few days ago, scientists have discovered an entirely new, previously unknown organ in the human body. This astonishing discovery (We missed noticing a major organ? Oops!), covered in news outlets worldwide (click here ), was published first in the journal Scientific Reports...

I’m not a hater. Ok, sure, I won’t be lining up for tickets to Sir Elton’s final final tour. All right, yea, James Corden, so charming-super-enthusiastic blah blah, but enough. Hmm…that does sound a bit like "hating." Never mind. Ratings for the 60th annual Grammy Awards on CBS dropped 24% in 2018...

When I ask myself, What is new in music today? What’s new in sound? I tumble into a dark abyss, fearful I can’t answer those questions, fearful that I have failed to listen carefully to Spotify’s 30 million tracks and therefore will disappoint the few citizens of Earth who rely on me for insights...

I’m sitting here alone at the bar in The Smith, about to order dinner. Don’t want to feel like a loser sitting by himself, so I check my iPhone, like there will be crucial messages and updates requiring my response. But no texts, no emails. This sucks. Everyone else is speed typing with their...

Not sure it makes sense to say that I “ran into” my colleague from back in the day on YouTube, but that’s sort of how it happened. Bob Power was an engineer, producer, musician and composer, often working out of Calliope studios in Midtown, which was Bang’s “crash pad” in the early 90s. That’s...

I was flailing a bit, trying to figure out what the next column might be about when my partner Brian suggested, “How about Kidz Bop?” To which I replied, “What the hell is Kidz Bop?” “Look it up,” he deadpanned. Brian has two beautiful little girls, ages 5 and 9. So, turns out that Kidz Bop is the...